Nature Cure eBook

Those who have studied the previous chapters carefully
will readily comprehend these facts. They will
know that acute and subacute conditions represent
Nature’s cleansing and healing efforts, and
that local suppression by drug or knife only serves
to turn Nature’s corrective and purifying activities
into chronic disease.

The highest art of the true physician is to preserve
and to restore, not to mutilate or destroy.

Chapter XIX

Chronic Diseases

The “Old School” of medical science defines
acute diseases as those which run a brief and more
or less violent course and chronic diseases as those
which run a protracted course and have a tendency
to recur.

Nature Cure attaches a broader and more significant
meaning to these terms. This will have become
apparent from our discussion of the causes, the progressive
development and the purpose of acute diseases in the
preceding pages.

From the Nature Cure viewpoint, the chronic condition
is the latent, constitutional disease encumbrance,
whereas acute disease represents Nature’s efforts
to rectify abnormal conditions, to overcome and eliminate
hereditary or acquired morbid taints and systemic poisons
and to reestablish normal structure and functions.

To use an illustration: In a case of permanent
or recurrent itchy psoriasis, the “Old School”
physician would look upon the itchy skin eruption
as the chronic disease, while we should see in the
external eczema an attempt of the healing forces of
Nature to remove from the system the inner, latent
hereditary or acquired psora, which constitutes the
real chronic disease.

It stands to reason that the exterior eruptions should
not be suppressed by any means whatever, but that
the only true and really effective method of treatment
consists in eliminating from the organism the inner,
latent psoric taint. After this is accomplished,
the external “skin disease” will disappear
of its own accord.

As another illustration of the radical difference
in our respective points of view, let us take hemorrhoids
(piles). The regular physician considers the
local hemorrhoidal enlargements in themselves the
chronic disease, while the Nature Cure practitioner
looks upon hemorrhoids as Nature’s effort to
rid the system of certain morbid encumbrances and
poisons which have accumulated as a result of sluggish
circulation, chronic constipation, defective elimination
through kidneys, lungs, and skin and from many other
causes.

These constitutional abnormalities, which are the
real chronic disease, have to be treated and corrected.
After this has been done, the hemorrhoidal enlargements
and discharges will take care of themselves.

It is, therefore, absolutely irrational, and frequently
followed by the most serious consequences, to surgically
remove the piles or to suppress the hemorrhoidal discharges
and thereby to drive these concentrated poison extracts
back into the system.